But God Can Be Funny
by Hilary Chuff
Summary: It's 2005 and the dead are returning to life. Resurrection AU.
1. Chapter 1

When she opens her eyes it's green all around her, bright, verdant, and for a second she thinks the curse must take longer than everyone's always said. They always said it would be instant, and painless, and it's true that nothing hurts but it's also not true that she doesn't feel anything. She can feel something soft and wet against her cheek and something crawling along her ankle and it's only as the brightness starts to fade that she realizes it's not the burning, blinding light of the curse she sees, it's grass on the ground and leaves on the trees and moss swallowing up their trunks.

The soft, wet against her cheek is the mulch on the forest floor, the crawling along her ankle some beetle she reaches up to swat away, and though she was so sure that what she was seeing was the light from his wand, it still takes her a minute to remember where she'd been, whose wand it was and why.

She sits up then, suddenly, dirt smudged across her face and grass in her hair because she's in the middle of a forest. It doesn't make sense. She'd been in her living room one moment and then it had all been so quick, the door splintering in and James in the front room, her feet crashing on the stairs and Harry's door slamming behind her. She'd shoved everything she could reach in front of it, as if that could stop him, but it had only paused him for a second before he was standing before her and she was crying, tears and snot smearing her face, her hands up and pleading with him and then there was that bright, green light. And then she was here.

The only explanation is that the curse must've backfired somehow, must've broken and sent her spinning through space to land here in the forest, tree roots creeping out towards her like fingers and mushrooms sprouting up around her. She can't tell whether she's been asleep or just thrown, but there's a chance she couldn't have been gone long, she can still get back to the house, can maybe still stop him, save Harry, do something, and before she knows it she's balling her fists and squeezing her eyes shut and focusing on finding that vibration in the air that she can slip through, that'll crack shut behind her and open up for her in Godric's Hollow, where her house is, where her son is, where he is and where she can stop him.

She hadn't considered where she was or how far it was from the house and when she finally stumbles onto the street a block from the house her head is spinning violently and she almost needs to stop to vomit right then, but there's no time because if she's fast maybe she can still save him, can still stop him. She lurches into a run despite the way the world tilts under her feet and she weaves side to side down the block but she still makes it without falling, and there's the house, there it is, just a few steps until suddenly –

It's not the house anymore. It's ruins, the roof fallen through in several spots and the support beams exposed. There's the door, shattered in, but cobwebs stretch between the splinters and she must be too late, it doesn't make sense, but as she throws herself into the mess she still can't help but think how things shouldn't be so dusty, so untouched. It doesn't occur to her until she's halfway up the stairs that, dead or alive, there hadn't been James in the front room, in the front room where he'd gone to meet him, to save them, to sacrifice himself. Maybe the same thing happened, she thinks hopefully, maybe he's in the forest too, and she keeps moving to Harry's room, doesn't let herself slow down until she's standing there and it's clear that this is where it happened, this is where there was whatever it was that made the house like this because the room itself is completely destroyed. There's nothing left of Harry's crib but wood chips and he's nowhere in them, there's no sign of him or anyone or anything having been in this house for years and something strange and dark curls in her belly. It doesn't make sense.

She backs out of the house more slowly than she came in, but she still doesn't stop. Hogwarts, she thinks, Dumbledore will understand, will know something. His wards will have gone off and he'll have realized that something's happened. Maybe he's been here, maybe he found Harry, maybe she was too late to save him herself but maybe he wasn't. She stumbles the block away from the building and closes her eyes and swallows hard and she's outside the gates, pushing them open enough to squeeze through the cracks where the chain doesn't hold them completely shut and then she's sprinting up the grounds, her hands grasping at the large oak doors and prying them open.

There's no one inside really, no students, and again she can't help thinking that something is wrong here, something is off – It's October, there should be students all around, clogging the halls and the stairways, but everything is clear and empty until she reaches the right hallway and then the only thing in her way is the gargoyle statue and as much as she screams at it, screams loud enough for Dumbledore to hear her up the stairwell, screams every bloody candy Muggle or otherwise that she can think of it refuses to move.

There are footsteps to her right but she can't stop to look at them, she just keeps shouting until her voice is almost nothing, guessing passwords until the footsteps fade away and whoever was there is gone. She can't think of anything else, any other sweets and she realizes as she starts guessing anything, guessing soups and pot pies and colors and shapes and any word that she can think of that Dumbledore's ever said that she's on her knees. That's when she hears footsteps again and this time they don't stop until they're only a few feet away and she can practically feel the wand in the man's hand even though he hasn't trained it on her yet.

Her throat aches and she sighs, deep and heavy, before she turns to look at him. There's something familiar there that she can't place, something about the set of his cheekbones and the curve of his jaw, and she can't stop looking at him, heavy and silent, until she finally manages to rasp out, "Where's Dumbledore?"

"Dead," he answers, and she can feel what little wind was left in her sails breezing by. "He died eight years ago. What's your name?"

It doesn't make any sense, none of it, but she has nothing left to fight it with now, nothing left to hold on to, and she leans forward to press her palms to the cool stone, to rest her forehead on it. Her voice is rough and weak and it takes all she has left to gather herself back up from the floor and sit on her heels instead and when she finally speaks all she can manage is one word. "Lily."

"Let's go to my office, Lily."

She follows him.


	2. Chapter 2

He leads her out of the castle and across the grounds to the greenhouses. His office is attached to one of them, stuck to the side like a second thought, and it's just shy of being too warm and humid inside the room. He pulls out the chair for her before moving behind the desk and she feels small again, like a student called to the professor's office, like she's forgotten some assignment or done abysmally on an exam and needs a talking to.

She sits quietly as he mulls around, pulling something out of the drawers and casting a quick few spells before he's setting a mug of hot mulled wine and honey in front of her. Her throat is too sore and she's too tired to mistrust him and her hands find the mug quickly, fingers curling around it as she takes a few calming sips.

"How's that?" he asks and her throat feels better already – he enchanted it, she'd seen and she hadn't known how exactly but she's thankful for it – and she feels calmer, more sure though no less confused.

"I spoke with Dumbledore last week. What do you mean he's been dead for eight years?" she asks by way of an answer, sitting straighter in her chair and determined to regather her strength, her focus.

The man looks at her and she can't quite put words to the expression he wears, not quite sad or pained, more nostalgic than anything else, but still entirely different. He clears his throat, adjusts the Daily Prophet at the corner of his desk before he continues.

"Headmaster Dumbledore died in June of 1997 during an attack on the school." His voice is steady, careful as he explains, and he watches for her reaction before he continues, reaching for the Prophet and laying it out on the desk in front of her. "That was just over eight years ago."

She looks down at the paper, silent and solemn, and sure enough the date reads July 13, 2005. And then there's the headline: "Identity of Bristol Man, Seventh Returned, Verified by Ministry"

"Seventh returned?" They're the only words she can manage as she carefully picks up the paper, as if to make sure it's real, as if to make sure it's actually there. It could still be fake, of course, this could all be fake, some sort of strange joke, but if the killing curse had backfired it makes just as much sense to send her through time as it does to send her through space.

"Do you remember a man named Ellwood Thomelson? He was murdered by Death Eaters in 1976."

Again he seems to be waiting for her to say something, and she shifts uncomfortably in her seat as if that could help her remember one name out of hundreds. "There were so many..." she starts, lifting one shoulder up in some sort of tense shrug, but he's already waving the question off, wearing some sort of tight polite smile, and she thinks it might be meant to be apologetic. She can still feel it, though, the guilt pooling in the pit of her stomach, that sour taste at the back of her throat. She should remember him. He was someone, and he was murdered, and she'd read the newspapers in school and heard the reports but if she'd committed every name to memory, every soul to heart then she would've never been able to fight, too weighed down and heavy with some strange family's grief.

"Last month, Ellwood Thomelson... came home," he says by way of explanation, and she can tell he's struggling to find the words but she has nothing to give. "He died almost thirty years ago and then in June he just walked into his old house as if he were coming home from a day at work. And he's not the only one - after him, six more people who were murdered over the last forty years have returned."

She nods a little as if she understands, but all she can hear is that one word, repeating itself over and over and over again, growing larger and heavier and thicker until it fills every thought.

"I was murdered," she says, as if acknowledging it out loud might change anything, make it more or less true, more or less real. She can hardly focus on anything else, the word and his voice and that flash of green spinning through her mind, and somewhere deep in her bones she knew, she knew from the beginning, but to be sitting here and have been murdered both - but then of course the curse hadn't backfired. There had never been a case of the curse being anything less than completely lethal, and to think that she, that her family would be the exception - she aches with the knowledge for James, herself, Harry, and it pounds so hard and hurting against her ribs that she almost misses what he says.

"But you've returned. More and more people are coming back, popping up all over the country - it seems like there's at least two a week coming back these days, wandering out of parks and forests and alleys in the city, and you, you're sitting right here -"

"My son," she cuts him off, sudden and sharp, her hands white-knuckled and gripping the edge of the table. The soreness in her throat is back, and she swallows hard to rid herself of it, to keep going despite the way the words scrape out. "My son Harry is just a baby - if he comes back somewhere without anyone around, without someone to find him -" She can't finish the thought, doesn't know how, and she has to navigate around the words to find the last quiet question. "How will I find Harry?"

He looks at her then, slowly and carefully, before he answers. "The night that Voldemort-" (she flinches at the name. Dumbledore always told them not to, but she never managed to fully shake herself of it, and now here, with the memory of sobbing for her son, of the flash of green light still fresh in her mind, it's even harder not to) "-came after the Potters – came after you and your family – something went wrong." He pauses for another long moment, and she swears she can almost feel the wood of his desk splintering beneath her fingers. "Harry survived the curse, Lily. He's alive."


	3. Chapter 3

He'd considered it for what seemed like an eternity when she'd asked, "Can I see him?" before, finally, he'd nodded and then smiled - in that order, his smile loose and nervous, and she's not sure exactly what to think of that but still, his answer had her heart pounding in her chest, thrumming just under her skin like something wild and barely contained. He'd lead her through another door in his office to a bedroom in the back, and then to a fireplace large and spacious enough to fit them both. "Anti-apparition wards," he'd offered as explanation, but she didn't ask, didn't care, had only waited restlessly as he'd thrown the powder into the flames and then blindly followed him through them. Now, waiting in a large, empty house - alone - she's starting to question whether that was wise.

The man had seemed friendly enough, had been kind and careful with her at Hogwarts, but after he left she realized she'd never even asked his name. He'd explained the house was Sirius's ("Nice to see somewhere familiar?" he'd asked when he'd lead her to the sitting room, and then explained when she didn't understand, and then had even touched her delicately on the shoulder when she'd asked, "Sirius?" voice high and tight and careful - she hadn't the strength or nerve to ask about anyone else after that), but though Sirius might've once lived there the house is still the Black family manor.

It's heavy, dark inside the house, and something feels sharp and dangerous in the rooms, like the family's magic still lurks. The family tapestry still hangs on the wall, Sirius and others burned out of evidence, and his mother's portrait had shrieked and screamed at her when she'd opened the curtains until an ancient looking house elf had come to shove her away, close the curtains, and then ignore her entirely, grumbling to himself all the while. This may have been Sirius's house, but it was also his family's, and the man who'd brought her here - he could be anyone, could be a Death Eater, one of You-Know-Who's disciples who'd recognized her and brought her to this old magic, old blood house so He could come and finish the job. Her mouth goes dry and she forces herself to stop considering all of the terrible possibilities. He'd been kind and he'd seem to know how to find Harry for her and she doesn't know where else to go, who else to turn to (who's left to turn to) anyway.

It seems like it's been a full hour by the time someone comes, and she can hear them out on the building's stoop from where she paces in the sitting room, too antsy and sick to sit for too long. She's not sure whether to meet them at the door or hide, suddenly more aware than ever that she doesn't have her wand to protect herself with, and she remembers training with the rest of the Order, learning how to fight with her fists, learning how to run away, but something in her freezes, feet stuck to the floor in the doorway to the hall, as the door opens. And then Minerva McGonagall steps through and Lily's moving, gasping and stumbling forward to throw her arms around the woman, bury her face in her robes.

The professor is shushing her, one hand on Lily's shoulder and the other patting the back of her head, and it isn't until Lily finally pulls away that she realizes she'd started crying. She's got her hand on Professor McGonagall's cheek before she processes that she's moved, and she's never touched her like this, so familiarly, and the feeling that she shouldn't, that she should move her hand builds and builds until McGonagall's hand comes up to meet it, hold it there, and then she feels nothing but warm. She and Professor McGonagall stand there, still, for a long moment until Minerva finally steps back, letting go of Lily's hand so that she can grasp both of her shoulders and look her in the eye.

"What did you say to me at your house on that first morning?" Minerva asks, and Lily would almost be thrown if they hadn't drilled this into her in the Order, if she hadn't been through her questions with everyone until they were second nature.

"I said, 'I know already, Sevy's told me all about it.'"

Professor McGonagall nods, firmly, and then she reaches to smooth Lily's hair again and Lily's throat is so thick she can hardly get her own question out. "How many detentions did you give me in school?"

"Twelve," Professor McGonagall answers, and she almost smiles, her mouth tight and drawn but curled at the edges.

"And how many of Filch's detentions did you excuse?"

"Fourteen."

With that Lily's satisfied, relief welling in her chest, and she buries herself back in McGonagall's robes again, breathes in deeply and allows herself a moment before she steps away to examine McGonagall's face.

"That man," Lily starts.

"Neville," the professor corrects her before she can finish. "Neville Longbottom. He's our Herbology professor now."

"Neville," Lily breathes, and she feels so empty for a second that she nearly stops breathing. Neville, little Neville, the baby only a day older than her own son and so large now, so strong, a professor at Hogwarts. He'd explained it had been a long time – twenty-three years if her maths were right, but she hadn't thought – hadn't really considered – Neville, the boy almost exactly Harry's age, and a grown man now. Older than her.

Professor McGonagall's hand is at her elbow and Lily lets herself be lead back into the sitting room, deposited on a couch with a summoned tea cup placed in her hand. Hot water spouts from the other woman's wand and a tea bag comes zooming in from the kitchen, but the feel of the cup hot between her hands is enough.

"He killed us," she says dully once she's found her voice again, and when she looks up the professor is watching her closely.

"But Harry lived."

"Harry lived."

It still doesn't seem real, none of it, even after McGonagall's tried to explain, explain about her love and sacrifice and the magic in Petunia's blood because of the magic in her own. She hadn't told her everything, only the basics, and even an hour later, as Professor McGonagall is preparing more tea (in the kitchen this time, and Lily supposes that means that she's stable enough to be left alone), she still can't quite fight through the fog in her brain to understand it all. But Harry lived. Harry is alive, and it's all that matters.

At least until he walks through the door, tall and lanky and messy-haired, looking so much like James and so much like she could've never pictured, sweet and brilliant and kind and impossibly familiar.

"Er, hi, mum," he says, and she loses her breath so quickly that she nearly chokes.


	4. Chapter 4

She doesn't want his first impression of her to be a bad one. She knows it's ridiculous, his first impression, as if he isn't her baby, isn't the son she loved and protected and hid for over a year, the son she held in her arms and died for only hours ago – but then he isn't. It's been over twenty years for him and he was too little to remember anything from before and so now, standing in the ancestral Black family home, this is the first time he's meeting her. And she doesn't want to muck it up.

She swallows that horrible scratchiness in the back of her throat and stands, but she's holding her whole body so tightly in an effort not to fall apart that her muscles nearly don't quite cooperate.

"Harry," she says once she's on her feet, and it comes out almost like a question, as if she's making sure, but twenty years or not she'd recognize him anywhere under any circumstances, her son looking so much like his father and yet so much himself, too.

He nods and smiles, nerves pulling sporadically at the corner of his mouth, and he waits for her to come to him. She does, hands trembling so hard she almost doesn't dare to touch him with them, but then one hand comes up of its own volition to muss his hair.

"I can never get it to lay flat, not even in the bath," she tells him, her smile small and suddenly watery, and then he's hugging her, his hands bunching in the sides of her jumper and his head clumsily nudging at her shoulder and she holds him so closely that she can't hold herself together anymore.

They stay like that a long time, long enough for Lily to finally stop shaking, long enough for her to regain some semblance of control and lead Harry back to the couch to sit. She wipes at her cheeks with the backs of her hands and then smoothes his hair again, keeps one of his hands in hers, and she can't stop just looking at him, drinking in every bit of him, his nose, his cheeks, his thick glasses and the green, green eyes behind them, the scar on his head –

"You look exactly like the pictures," he says, quiet, with a sort of sad smile.

"You look so much like…" she starts and then falters, reaching out to brush her fingers over his cheek.

"Like dad?" he asks and something in her squeezes, hard and painful, and her hand tightens on his for a second before it passes.

"Like you," she finishes, and he grins. It's striking how familiar that smile is and suddenly she can't help thinking about how many of them she never got the chance to see, never got the chance to cause or give, and her voice warbles when she finally babbles, "I missed so much, didn't I? I missed everything, all of it, I couldn't protect you –"

"You did," he cuts her off then. "What you did – it was what saved me, over and over again." He tells her about it, about how it kept him safe at the Dursleys', protected him when he went after the stone, how she came to him in the graveyard and in the forest. He tells her about everything then or tries, explaining about school and his friends and seeing the thestrals, about running and Quidditch and the Chamber of Secrets, some of it mere mentions and others described in thick, heavy detail. Whenever he starts or stumbles, she squeezes his hand or asks a question and hearing it, hearing everything – she can't imagine how he's managed through so much, to survive at every turn, but he's here and he's alive and he made it despite it all.

By the time he's finished it's late, and he's still got a thousand questions for her but she's faltering, slow and sluggish and then McGonagall's back. She must've left at some point, hours ago, but she comes back in from down the hall levitating fresh linens beside her, and gives that tight pursed lip look that Lily knows, beyond all appearances, is fond.

"You may stay here for the night, until we find somewhere more suitable for you," McGonagall explains, and Lily nods. "I'll stay here with you, of course, Mr. Potter I'm sure must have work in the morning."

"That's all right," Harry says quickly, and there's an edge of something not quite distinguishable in his voice. "I can stay here with her – I'll owl Ginny, she won't mind, and I've got an extra sick day or two I can use."

Minerva gives another of those secretly fond looks, but waits a moment before she nods. "All right then. I'll leave you two to it and I'll be back in the morning." She sets the linens down and Lily stands to give her one last hug which McGonagall accepts, albeit a bit stiffly before she pats Lily's shoulder goodnight.

And then it's just the two of them again, Harry leading her up the stairs and through the house, explaining all the while how there are plenty of free rooms and that his friend Ron's mum Mrs. Weasley had made them all scrub the whole place down, chase out all the dark magic and creatures lurking and banish them from the house. "The only things she didn't manage to get rid of where the pin-up posters in Sirius's room," he adds with a sheepish grin, and something about it slams into her, nearly knocks her back a step.

"Can I see his room?" she asks, suddenly nervous and needing, and he nods and leads the way.

It's just how she might have imagined it and she laughs out loud. There're Gryffindor banners and pennants everywhere, half-naked women smiling down at her from all of the walls, and little knick-knacks scattered throughout the room. It's messy, as if no one's touched it since he left when he was sixteen, and she remembers the story of how hastily he packed, throwing everything he could grab into a trunk and storming off. Still, she wonders if he didn't purposely leave some of this behind to spite his family, the Muggle records and magazines and posters a pointed reminder of his beliefs.

"Would it – would it be all right if I slept in here?" she asks, and then almost immediately wishes she could take it back. Harry had mentioned what had happened to Sirius only in the vaguest terms, but still, there must be a reason that even after nine years no one's seemed to have touched anything or tidied up. "Actually, I don't want to mess anything up –" she starts when Harry hesitates, but then he shakes his head.

"No, you should," he says quickly then, "someone should stay in here – and I'll be just downstairs in one of the guest rooms if you need anything, the second door on the left, and the bathroom is just through there." He points to a door tucked into a corner of the room and, with a flick of his wand, it opens and the towels he's been holding zoom through to fold themselves on a shelf. He turns back to the sloppy bed and the blankets strip themselves and disappear into an already stuffed hamper by the closet, the fresh linens tucking themselves nicely around the mattress and enveloping the pillows.

He lingers for a moment longer, the comforter pulling itself up to the top of the bed and then turning back down, and then he's hugging her again, his head back at her shoulder in a messily-coordinated goodnight. And then he's gone and she's left to explore the room, find the picture of the four of them, so little and young, plastered to the wall. James, Sirius, Remus, even Peter – all gone, no matter what happened before. One edge of the photograph is curling. She presses it back down, holding it until it finally sticks, and then climbs into the bed. The lights dim on their own, and it's not long after folding herself into the blankets until she's asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

The door is splintering in and James sprints to the front room, shouting, so she takes off up the stairs two, three at a time, Harry wailing as she holds him too tightly to her chest, and she hears the words, can see the flash of green lighting up the room from behind her and she nearly stumbles and falls at the top step, something terrible and sick wrenching her feet from underneath her, but she has to keep going, even more now, has to get to the emergency floo powder, it's all she can think, the floo powder, they're out downstairs, ran out yesterday and they hadn't refilled yet, hadn't needed to, but he's too close behind her, the floo powder in the hall cabinet and the fireplace back downstairs and there's not enough time to reach either, to linger in the hall for even another second, and she ducks into Harry's nursery, dropping him into his crib and barricading the door but there's nothing here, nothing to help, nowhere to go and she can hear the sound of wood crumbling to sawdust, hear the sound of something high-pitched and horrible, and it takes too long to realize that one is the door and the other is her, the noise clawing its way out from deep in her throat, and then suddenly she's turning, ducking, shielding herself and Harry from the woodchips and debris flying in all directions and the wail is incorrect babbling, pleases and don'ts and mercies that don't make any sense, and then there's a flash. She's back in the living room and the door is splintering in and James is sprinting forward and she's barricading herself upstairs, only now once he's through all he says is one word and the flash of light is red and she's writhing on the ground, screaming until her throat is raw, too weak to stop him when he crosses the room to Harry and then the light is green and he turns to leave, leave her on the floor alone and even if she were strong enough to pick herself off the carpet there's no reason to and she sinks into it, deeper and deeper until she's through the ceiling of the floor below and then beneath the house, dirt soft and moist against her skin, heavy and thick on top of her limbs, and she tries to move her arms, to claw her way back out, but the mud only catches her movements and swallows them, the dirt acrid and bitter in her nose, her mouth –

She wakes with a start, slick with sweat and shaking and it takes several long moments of gasping before she catches her breath. She can still taste the dirt on her tongue, can still feel it scratching at the back of her throat, in her lungs, and only sheer force of will and a hand fisted so tightly in the sheets that she can't feel her fingers stops her from bending in two, attempting to hack the imaginary dirt back up. Slowly, the spasms in her chest calm and her fingers loosen their grip on the blankets and she takes a second to fill her lungs with air and then let it back out.

It hits her then, in a way that it hasn't before, that James is dead. The nightmares are nothing new – this one in particular, maybe, but even so there've been plenty that were similar enough – but not having him there when she wakes up is. She wouldn't always bother him, would usually just glance over to reassure herself he was alright, but now that he's not only not here, that he's also not alright… Even if only a day has passed for her, she's living in a world where James has been dead for twenty years, whatever was left of him buried decades ago.

The thought sends her surging to the wall, prying the loose corner of the picture back up. She can't bear to see it still stuck there, the three of them lost and Peter, Peter who by all assumptions betrayed them, Peter who by Harry's account killed James and imprisoned Sirius and abandoned Remus. Peter who hurt Harry in the graveyard and a thousand other times. He doesn't belong in the picture, on Sirius's wall, and the loose corner tears off but the rest of the photograph stays firmly stuck to the plaster despite how many times she manages to pry her nails underneath it and slice her fingertips on the edges. It won't come off and, frustrated, she smears the blood from her fingers on his face, the dark red stain clouding his smile until it's gone. That, at least, she can take from him.

Her fingers are still stubbornly bleeding a minute later, even after she's sucked them into her mouth, and part of her dully wonders if a thirteen-year-old Sirius had cursed the thing, made its edges sharp and vicious so that his parents could never remove it. In the absence of a wand to heal the cuts, she wraps them in the tattered fabric of her shirt, still dirty from the forest floor. She'd been so tired that it hadn't occurred to her change, to ask Harry to transfigure something or dig through the remains of Sirius's closet, and now, well, it's already messy. She might as well bleed on it, too.

She's only just entering the kitchen to scavenge for bandages, salve, anything when she hears a door open and shut above her, Harry's footsteps soft as he pads down the stairs.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," she says as soon as he's in sight, but he shakes the question off.

"You didn't, I was up," he answers slowly, but a yawn interrupts him halfway through, and he's still stretching his arms as he moves into the kitchen. He's only just finished arranging himself against the counter, one hand mopping down his face, before he looks up and frowns. "You're bleeding."

He's up and moving before she can even think to wave him off, rounding the island to take her hands in his and examine them.

"It's nothing," she starts, "stubborn bit of wall decoration in Sirius's room," but he's already got his wand out, murmuring incantations quietly while the blue light surrounds her fingertips and stitches the skin back together, the blood vanishing in its wake.

"I was never great at healing charms, but that should be alright," he says, dropping her hands once he's finished.

He doesn't ask, but she can feel the question hanging between them and she looks down, silent, until the words spill out on their own. "It was the picture – I don't know, I don't sleep well and I was thinking about – about James and them and about you and I just – I couldn't stand it, looking at it on his wall, him smiling and all – It wouldn't come off, though."

She looks up at him then, and he's frowning, and she remembers uncomfortably what he'd told her earlier, about how Peter had paused for just a second too long once they'd been captured, but it's not enough. It could never be enough.

"You don't sleep well?" he surprises her by saying instead, his brows knit together tightly. His voice is more breathless than she'd expect, low and urgent, and he inches closer.

She squirms under his gaze, wants to shrug the question off, but something about the way he's looking at her makes it seem important that she answer, so she nods. "For the last few years – ever since things really started to get bad. And then, in the Order –" Her voice cracks and she pauses, sucks in a shuddering breath, but he speaks for her, eyes soft now.

"For me, it started after Cedric." She's the one that looks up then, reaches for him to smooth her fingers over the back of his hand. "For a long time I thought that it was because – but even after the forest, I still had them. Less, but they were still always there. I never knew you did, too."

She makes them tea. At some point they move to the living room, voices low and soft, getting up only once to fill the kettle and set it back on the stove, and talk turns to James, Sirius, their days in school. It was the middle of the night when they came downstairs, and by the time Harry is fading, his head lolling onto her shoulder and the empty mug slipping from his hands it's nearly dawn. She sends him off, tucking a blanket around his shoulders and shooing him back up the stairs, but the process of facing Sirius's room again, alone, sends her back down to the couch, stealing another shrug from the back of an armchair to wrap around herself as she settles in.

Still, her eyes drift to the tapestry, finding the burned bit where his name once was, and something in her is terribly wanting again. A small, hopeful piece of her whispers that he might be next, that Remus might come home, that James could wake up on the forest floor and make it to Hogwarts the same as she did. Anyone could come back, really – Harry had explained that, as far as the Ministry could tell, there didn't seem to be any reason to it yet, and it could be anyone, which meant it could be James next. But then, that's the problem, and her eyes drift to other names on the tapestry, lighting on those foreign and familiar before finally finding Bellatrix. It could be anyone.


	6. Chapter 6

She wakes slowly to the sound of hushed voices on the other side of the wall, soft and indistinct but quick, building in tone and volume until she can almost make them out, but then a roar overtakes it all as Harry shouts, "She's my MUM, Hermione!"

She freezes on the couch, hearing what must be Hermione shushing him and realizing this isn't an exchange she's meant to hear. They're in the foyer by the front door, and she wonders if Harry hadn't spotted her when he'd walked by, if he'd assumed that she'd gone back up to Sirius's room after she'd sent him to bed.

Hermione's voice is still loud enough to hear as she tries to calm him, argues back with, "Even if she is, it's still not safe! She's returned from the grave, Harry, you can't pretend that doesn't sound like dark magic! It's not safe for you to be alone with her until we know more about them!"

"Do you think I'm stupid?" he counters quickly. "You think I don't know to put wards up?"

And that explains how he woke right when she did, how he wasn't far behind her when she'd snuck down to the kitchen to bandage her fingers.

"You think I don't know to be careful? Professor McGonagall was here last night, too, and she trusted my mum and me enough to leave us here—"

"She's just as biased as you!" Hermione shouts, shrill, and for a second Harry's voice finally falls silent. "She knew your mum before, you said yourself that they were in the Order together. If McGonagall says it's really your mum, I believe her, but that doesn't mean that there isn't more to it, and McGonagall wants her – wants all of them – back, just as much you do!"

For a second there's nothing, no sound floating down the end of the hall and into the living room, but now that she's properly awake, now that she's straining to hear, his words, despite the lower volume and gruffer tone, are just barely loud enough.

"You didn't lose anyone, Hermione. And I know that makes you think you can be objective, but really it just means you can't even begin to understand. So just stay out of it, alright?"

She's only heard half the conversation, but by the end of Lily nearly expects Harry to kick Hermione out. Judging by the sound of things, though, it's Harry who leaves, storming off down the hallway, confirmed by the glance of him she's able to steal as he walks past the doorway and off up the stairs.

There are no more sounds from the hallway after a door slams above them, but no footsteps either, and though Lily knows she would've heard if Hermione had disapparated (if she'd even been able through all the protection wards, Harry's and otherwise), she's still almost surprise to find the girl (woman, really, even a few years her senior) standing there as she peers around the doorway.

She's teary, pressing the backs of her hands to her cheeks, and she doesn't notice Lily until she's full into the hall, and then Hermione starts.

"Oh," comes the startled gasp, and then the recognition flits across her face as she hurries to set herself right, something like guilt settling in the furrow of her brow. "I'm sorry, we thought you were upstairs," comes out half-strangled, breathless. The silence sits between them for a second, a real, present thing, and then, finally collected, Hermione is striding forward and reaching a hand out. "I'm Hermione. You must be Mrs. Potter," she adds politely.

Lily's hand meets hers, and Hermione's voices catches just slightly as she continues.

"Merlin, I suppose I knew you were young, but I never really realized…"

Lily flushes at that, hot under Hermione's careful, curious gaze, especially after hearing what Hermione thinks, that she's dangerous, a threat to Harry, but something in that sticks with her, a lump in her throat, and her own voice nearly dies when she finally finds it.

"You're right, you know."

And that seems to startle Hermione even more, her eyes flying wide.

"Harry is– He's my son," and that still aches, that her son, her baby is this man, strong and brave and grown all without her, "and I would never, _never_ harm him, or let anything happen to him. But you're right. It sounds like dark magic."

She thinks for a second of what it was like before, before she woke up in the forest, before she was confined to their house in Godric's Hollow, and remembers too easily the glossy look in Benjy Fenwick's eyes when he'd turned up to a safehouse not himself, the tales of impersonators and imperius curses filtering throughout the Ministry, the recently slain bodies of Muggles picking themselves off the battle fields to rejoin the advance. There was so much darkness before that it chokes her for a minute, and she has to swallow hard to clear her throat.

"I understand if you don't think it's safe for me to be alone with him – or anyone."

You-Know-Who may be gone, his followers defeated by Harry and the rest of the Order years back, but with people returning… They'd developed a system, back then, to know when people were themselves, to know when they wore their own skins, and she knows who she is, but just because she's real, just because she's really his mother and really back, who's to say that, in the twenty years since, no one has thought of anything worse than what she knew?

Harry had said they didn't know why people were back, or how, only that they were. The idea that she might be back for a reason, that she might've been brought back for some larger purpose beyond her own second chance, isn't one she's particularly considered in the past day, but the possibility of it is all too real. She knows who she is, but not how or why, and if there's any chance that she could hurt him, Harry or his family or any of his friends, she won't risk it.

A muscle ticks in her jaw and she feels her teeth clenched together, but she stands resolute, and Hermione, bless her, nods, the furrow in her own brow smoothing out into something determined instead.

"Let's talk then," Hermione says, and they step back into the living room.


End file.
